The Key Roles Of Fidel Castro And The Cuban Revolution

Castro was a socialist, a leninist and a marxist. His attitude throughout his “dictatorship” was the way he communicated with the United States on military, trading agreements and politics. As he came to control the country, he made the promise to maintain the Cuban constitution of 1940, a constitution which guaranteed certain individual rights to the citizens of Cuba. Also stating that all of the governmental representatives would be held exactly a year from the day he took control. Despite not actually being in office, Castro was the most important force in regards to the post Batista Government. His full control of the country came when the former prime minister Miro Cardona resigned after a month of work with Castro.

After it became officially globally acknowledged that Cuba was in fact a communist state and was being led through a dictatorship run by Castro, it did not take long before powerful enemies and essential allies were formed. The act of seizing all foreign land with none or very little compensation was received with great hostility amongst those who lost in their property through this process, and probably the reaction that had the biggest impact on Cuba’s economy was that of the US. Castro’s communistic policies did not of course help calm this resentment and also took part in leading to the establishment of trade embargos with Cuba from the US. This meant that Cuba would now lose a very valuable buyer of their precious sugar, [5] but they did however gain another one, a powerful nation that shared quite similar Marxist ideals and were quick to form an alliance with the Cubans, the USSR.

In 1959, Cubareceived 74 percent of its imports from the US, and the US received 65 percentof Cuba’s exports. On February 3, 1962, the United States imposed a fulltrade embargo on Cuba, completely ending any type of trade between the twocountries. This embargo remains in effect today, more than four decades later,and has grown ! to be a huge center of debate and controversy (DeVarona 8).Opponents to the embargo argue that the embargo does nothing more than hurt theCuban people, while proponents argue that the embargo places pressure on Castroto repair Cuba’s mismanaged and corrupt government. Both the supportersand the opponents of this embargo have strong arguments and evidence to supportthese

Castro was not even aware of his impact on the people. In an interview with American journalist Liza Howard on April 30th 1963, Castro had given Liza “the impression that he was not completely aware of the extent to which terror had gripped Cuba” (United States. Central Intelligence Agency). The next strategy was to attack Cuba and Castro commercially, economically, and financially. Eisenhower administered the first trade embargo on Cuba on October 19th 1960. After working with the policy committees of US to Cuba, the White House had composed a document stating the regulations. This embargo covered all U.S. exports of good, but not medicines and certain foods. The States thought that creating this law against exporting would be taken as a form of more peaceful protest, to gain back the trading, Castro will need to step down from power. (United States. Presidential Directive). Castro also tried to restrict trading too, to get back at the U.S. to show that this was not a one way street. He created the Platt Amendment to stop Cuban sugar from being imported to the United States. In 1993 the US cracks down on Cuba intensifying the embargo in hopes of the economy failing. This soon forced Cuba into an agreement of allowing a certain amount of citizens to immigrate to either country per year. When Cuba shot down two U.S.

In 1975, the organization of American States lifted a long time standing ban and allowed member states to resume relations with Cuba. In 1977, President Carter attempted to make the situation better by lifting the travel ban for a college basketball team from the U.S. to travel to Havana. “In February 1963, President Kennedy made it illegal for almost all Americans to travel to Cuba” (History). The relationship between the two countries became non-existent in 1961 but by this time the U.S. and Cuba had exchanged diplomatic procedures. In 1980, Castro was accused of participating in a Drug deal with Panama. Castro denied the allegations and denied to help the U.S. to block trade and aid to Panama (Fidel).

In 1959, Cuban leader Fidel Castro seized power over Havana and overthrew the U.S. during the Cold War. Castro then began an alliance with the Soviet Union and proceeded to increase trade with them. After these events, Washington banned exports from the U.S. to Cuba. Restricted were later extended over the whole economy by placing an embargo, which limited Americans travel and the ability to do business with Cuba. These events lead towards restriction between both countries for over 50 years.

The United States embargo of Cuba has its roots planted in 1960, 53 years ago, when “the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar act of 1948… by 95 percent” (Hass 1998, 37). This was done in response to a growing

Due to increasing hostilities between the U.S. and Cuba, President Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations with Cuba on

The embargo that changed it all. Long before the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, the island realized that it really did need to count on its many tourists visit as a big process in developing their economic and social development but it wasn’t until the Cuban revolution in 1959, that really opened up the island into seeing that they need the tourism to grow in the future. The U.S. trade embargo was to stop any trading exports to go to Cuba, it was originally started by president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s State Department in October 19, 1960, where they wanted to stop all of U.S. exports to Cuba except for medicine and some food but then, in February 7, 1962 President John F. Kennedy made the embargo even worse by stop all trading with U.S. imports

The Cuban Embargo, also known as “el bloqueo” to Cuban citizens, was declared by the United States in 1960 to eliminate imports of Cuban

Cuba and the Affects of the Embargo The island nation of Cuba, located just ninety miles off the coast of Florida, is home to 11 million people and has one of the few remaining communist regimes in the world. Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro, came to power in 1959 and immediately instituted a communist program of sweeping economic and social changes. Castro allied his government with the Soviet Union and seized and nationalized billions of dollars of American property. U.S. relations with Cuba have been strained ever since. A trade embargo against Cuba that was imposed in 1960 is still in place today. Despite severe economic suffering and increasing isolation from the world community, Castro remains committed to communism. (Close Up

The United States responded by placing a trade embargo on everything but food and medicine. This would be extended in the future to all products by John F. Kennedy. (BBC) The U.S. obviously wasn’t happy with the idea of losing control, so they backed a revolt called the Bay of Pigs Invasion. This serious failure created an even bigger gap between the U.S and Cuba. It wasn’t long that the Cubans were being backed by the Soviets and eventually housing Soviet weapons. The housing of Soviet weapons brought the world the closest it has ever been to all-out nuclear war. The Cold War was in its height and Cuba had become a part of it. However, as an article by lecturer Marc-William Palen points out, the embargo is more than a cold war issue. The embargo was set due to a plethora of issues including the want to colonize and control Cuba which started in the early twentieth century. According to Palen, there are several key factors in the embargo. He points some of those out in this quote. “More specifically, the Cuban embargo is a modern-day manifestation of the Republican party’s longstanding imperialism of economic nationalism.” (Palen) Everybody assumes the embargo is purely about the cold war, however

The precise manner that American and Cuban relations would be operated was outlined in “The Platt Amendment, which was to govern American relations with Cuba down to the advent of Fidel Castro” which necessitated the input of the United States before the government of Cuba made any decision or attempted to take any action . The political landscape of Cuba was heavily influenced by the United States prominently supporting the military government of the dictator Fulgencio Batista following a coup in 1952 and the cancelling of elections on Cuba. As a result of their support to Batista’s military coup and government Batista was very pro United States business and government. This friendliness to large corporations and businesses from the United States created a very unstable and unsustainable economic model for long-term economic growth in Cuba because it was exclusively dependent on outside forces that could not be controlled by Cubans or the Cuban government. This is shown by the large presence of American sugar producers and corporations in Cuba as the main forces driving the economy of Cuba meaning “that it was at the mercy of external forces on the world market” making it impossible for Cuba to “plan its economy or to develop its standard of living on the basis of such dependence on capricious world forces which it could not hope to control” . American sugar corporations were so dominant and crucial to the Cuban economy that they held “about 75 per cent of Cuba’s arable land” and their sugar product made up “nearly 90 per cent of Cuba’s exports and 33 per cent of the country’s national income” . The dependence on outside corporations and the world market made only worse the condition for the majority of the Cuban population that was employed by

The history of the embargo started when The famous revolution took over Cuba in 1959. When Castro arrived to the power he decided to nationalize private properties and business owned by American companies. This action led to the emigration of many Cubans to America and the antagonism of Cuban- American relations. In 1960, the Eisenhower administration placed an embargo on exports to Cuba except for food and medicine. After that the Cuban government turned to the Soviet Union for assistance converting themselves in a communist country and an enemy of the United States. In 1962, President Kennedy expanded the Embargo including this time any trade or travel to the Caribbean island. During his presidency Jimmy

Able to weather a variety of political leaders, economic events, and historical eras, the U.S. embargo of Cuba is the longest and harshest embargo by one state against another in modern history. Following Castro’s overthrow of the Batista government in 1959 and threats to incite revolutions elsewhere in Latin America, the Unites State cancelled its trade agreement to buy Cuban sugar. Then, following a series of increasing hostile events, the United States severed diplomatic relations and initiated a full trade embargo in 1962. Trade between the United States and Cuba stopped. Spurred by the collapse of communism more than thirty years later, Congress